A little over half an hour ago, I dropped Amy off at school for the last day of 7th grade. It is a short day. Brandy will pick her up and she will be home by noon. At will also be the last day at Eastside Prep. This makes me sad, but as I’ve talked about before this year was a rocky year. The school, which had been a wonderful place for us in 6th grade, had just not lived up to expectations in 7th grade. Too much of the time it felt like we (and Amy) were in conflict with the school rather than feeling like the school was really doing their best to act in the best interests of Amy. Conflict over things that should have been no-brainers and obvious or at least easily resolved, which instead became soul-sucking battles. Things got a lot better in the third trimester when we had Amy switched back to the advisor she had in 6th grade who we liked a lot, rather than the advisor Amy had most of the year who Amy just never really got along with. The little things make a huge difference. But it was too late. A lot of the trust and faith we had in the school was already gone. And Amy and Brandy had already fallen in love with a new school.

In the fall Amy will be attending Chrysalis. As is probably obvious just from the name, it is a much less traditional program than EPS. Lots of one on one classes. (All math classes for instance, are always one on one.) In general class size is much smaller than the 30 that is typical in a public school, or even the 15 or so that was normal at EPS. Classes tend to be more like 6 students. And they put an emphasis on matching the right students to the right teachers (and classmates) to ensure a good match in personality, learning style, etc. There is also a lot of emphasis on flexibility. In classes where the student is ahead and going quickly (in Amy’s case Math for instance) they enable that. In cases where the student needs some extra pushing (in Amy’s case study skills) they spend extra time on that. Things like that. There are some bits that I’m worried might be a bit wishy washy and allow the students to slack a bit in some cases, but we shall see.

In the mean time, we just got a call from Amy, extremely upset, because she hadn’t gotten her yearbook when they were handed out today. They say we never submitted the form and paid and all that. Of course we had in fact done those things. Brandy is now rushing to the school to try to resolve the issue and make sure Amy has a yearbook that her friends can sign and such.

As if we needed it, final proof we made the right decision.

The most recent Curmudgeon’s Corner is now fixed. Well, it ain’t a masterpiece, but it is a lot better than it was.

If anybody tried to listen and gave up because it was unlistenable, force your podcast catching software to download it again and you should be good to go. Apologies for the problem.

For anybody who cares, the issue is with Garage Band’s Autonormalize option, which is supposed to BOOST the volume to a normalized level if the highest volume in your audio is lower than full volume. For whatever reason, it instead decided to dampen the volume. And for that matter just completely ignore the differing volumes I’d put on different tracks, the filters I had in place, etc. I turned that off and the results were once what I actually heard while editing in Garage Band.

Now, having said that, there was still an issue with my voice quality in the second half, as when I dropped Cynthia and went solo, unbenounced to me it stopped using my headset mic and started using the built in mic. But I knew that already when I was editing.

I’d always basically trusted in the past though that what I heard in Garage Band was basically what would be in the output once I exported. Guess I shouldn’t trust that. Bleh.

Also, let me just say, trying to troubleshoot and adjust things in Garage Band over a slow VNC connection from the other side of the continent from my desktop is a major pain. This is something I will try to avoid in the future.

I’ve “selected my seat” a bunch of different times for my flight Monday, but it keeps getting reset. I set them all when I first booked the tickets a few weeks ago. I selected again about a week ago. And I go now to double check the exact time of my flight and all, and two out of my four legs are reset again. Grrr…. here I go again. Less good seats to choose from now of course. And I bet when I actually get to the airport, I’ll have to select my seats yet again. Grrr…

I am sick today. And late to work. But I”ll drag myself in because of one meeting I want to make sure I’m at. Otherwise I’d consider staying home. Oh well. Off I go.

I have been thinking about this for awhile, and I mentioned this to Brandy not that long ago, but I recently realized that I spend a lot of my time without any cash on me these days. Not any. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Not even any pocket change. At work I pay for lunch and snacks using my employee id card which directly deducts from my paycheck. Most major purchases are online purchases these days. And in almost all other cases where I am out and about and spending money, I use my debit card. Occationally a credit card, but very rarely. Usually the debit card. I almost NEVER use cash any more.

For awhile I was reluctant to use the debit card for purchases under $20 or so and I’d use cash. But I no longer feel that compulsion. I’ll use my debit card to pay for a $1 purchase without thinking twice about it.

There are some places that are still cash only places, but generally I don’t shop there. Having to use cash is a pain. I’ll have to go to an ATM and make sure I have the needed amount of green actually in my pocket.

I used to always keep a certain amount of cash with me at all times, and if I was low I would go to the ATM and get more. But I slowly started feeling less and less urgent about it. I would run out of cash and not bother to replenish my supply until I *needed* to because I wanted to buy something somewhere that did not take plastic. But this is very rare these days.

As I was thinking about it recently, I realized I have gone weeks at a time with nothing in my wallet except receipts. I just don’t have very much need for actual paper cash any more. Money, yes. Of course. But not in the form of bits of paper or pieces of metal that I carry around with me.

You know the last thing that really got me on a regular basis? Vending machines. I needed that dollar bill to get a coke or a bag of chips. But once I didn’t have cash with me regularly, I’d want chips or whatnot and not have any cash. So I’d head to the ATM. But that WOULD NOT HELP. Because I’d get out however much money, but it would ALL BE IN TWENTIES. And guess what, the vending machines where I tend to be don’t take twenties. So I’d actually have to go somewhere and buy something with a twenty dollar bill, just to get change so I could use the vending machine.

Guess what the result of that was? I use the vending machines much much less than I used to. And that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

So anyway, as I sit here looking at my empty wallet, and realizing that it may be quite awhile until something comes up where I *need* to get those little pieces of paper out of the ATM, I am definitely thinking the day is not actually that far off where the use of paper and metal to pay for things will be very rare. It may take it awhile to die completely, but it is coming.

I think right now the longest I have gone with no cash is a few weeks. I bet you soon that will grow to months. Then maybe years.

The complete extinction of “cash” in the old paper and metal forms may take many decades yet. But I bet you that by the time a kid born today is a teenager, they will view spending of paper money and coins as a quaint antiquity. Hell, I bet a lot of teenagers today already think that. Hell, I kind of think that too.

We just have to wait for the rest of the world to catch up.